


Twelve Times Sam Winchester Was Batman

by summer_days



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dark Knight References, Gen, I change nothing, Lucifer (Supernatural) is a Little Shit, Poor Sam, Sam Winchester Needs a Hug, Sam Winchester has so many self worth issues, Self-Worth Issues, So much angst, You Have Been Warned, and resurrection, no happy ending, supernatural typical death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 10:19:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16366037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summer_days/pseuds/summer_days
Summary: A reflection on the many, many times Sam Winchester has won the battle, but lost the war.





	Twelve Times Sam Winchester Was Batman

_I was driving,_ Sam thought as he looked down at the unmoving form of his brother. _I was arguing with Dad, and we got hit._ The truck driver may have been a demon, but Sam didn’t feel absolved of any responsibility for the crash.

_I should be there,_ he thought for the millionth time. _I should be dying, and Dean should be fine._ _I was driving, it was my fault. This….this isn’t fair._ _And Dad…._

Just thinking about his father made Sam angry. Even now, with Dean in a coma and the two of them recovering, John was still focused on the demon.

The demon.

Not on Dean. His oldest son, who had always done everything John had asked, unlike Sam. Who was….was dying. After everything they’d been through over the past year….

Then Dean’s eyes flew open and he gasped, and Sam’s train of thought derailed. The nurses shunted him out of the room, only letting him back in when they’d run every test imaginable on his older brother, all of them confirming what Sam had known the second his brother had opened his eyes - _Dean was okay._

Sam felt like celebrating. Granted, there were some things that didn’t make sense, but he’d take the miracle. He vaguely registered the doctor mention something about angels, then John was in the room and Sam’s hackles went up. But something was off about his father too, enough that Sam figured he’d finally realized how close they’d come to losing Dean, so he agreed to fetch the man a cup of coffee.

It was only when he returned to find John lying on the floor that the world made horrible sense.

That he realized Dean’s miracle and his father’s death had not been isolated incidents.

**_Victory has defeated you._ **

****

Sam could barely hear past the shock that blanketed his brain. After two years of hunting, Lilith was dead, the blood pooling beneath her head beginning to snake its way across the sanctuary floor. Ruby was celebrating, but all Sam could hear was his brain replaying that one damning truth.

_And it is written that the first demon shall be the last seal._

Even Dean’s sudden appearance and Ruby’s death didn’t dim the horror rising within him.

_I screwed up._

All he’d wanted to do was be the hero, like he’d watched Dean be all his life. Killing Lilith….that was supposed to save the day, to stop the apocalypse from ever happening.

But he’d failed.

And as the first demon’s blood formed a circle on the sanctuary’s marble floor, as white light poured forth from some unknown source Sam was certain he never wanted to see, as a high-pitched ringing filled his ears, all Sam could think of was how this was all his fault.

**_Victory has defeated you._ **

 

Sam was falling.

And falling.

And falling.

He remembered reading somewhere, an eternity ago, that it took a person nine days to fall into Hell, and he vaguely wondered how long it would take one person and two angry archangels.

Already, he could both hear and feel Lucifer’s frustration, his anger, at being beaten by a _maggot_ after centuries of planning. Less prevalent was Michael’s anger, and Sam wondered if he’d dragged his half-brother into hell as well.

_Adam, I’m sorry._

His thoughts turned to Dean, to the state he’d left his brother in. Castiel was dead. Bobby was dead. Sam himself was falling into hell with the devil riding shotgun.

_Go find Lisa,_ he begged his brother. _Please. Forget me. Go be happy._

As he fell, he happened to remember a year ago, how his actions had freed Lucifer in the first place, and he wondered if this would even begin to make up for it. Maybe it would. After all, the world was safe. Dean, on the other hand….

Sam had to finally admit the truth to himself. Whatever Dean did, his older brother was now living in his own personal form of hell.

**_Victory has defeated you._ **

 

_It’s his soul. It’s gone._

Dean was panicking - Sam could see it in his face. Logically, he knew he should feel something as well, whether it was fear, worry, anger, curiosity, something. But there was nothing. Just the dull, throbbing pain of a broken nose.

Sam couldn’t understand _why_ Dean was worried. He was still Sam. He was out of the Cage. And he was a better hunter than he’d ever been.

Seriously, who needed a soul, anyway? From the sound of it, they just got in the way.

**_Victory has defeated you._ **

 

He was back. All of him.

Body, check.

Soul, check.

Mind….well, he was still working on that part.

He was no longer in Hell. He was safe, in another crappy motel with his brother worrying over him, just like always. Despite what Lucifer said, this was real.

Whenever the devil disagreed, Sam simply dug his thumb a little deeper into his left palm and reminded himself -

_Not real._

_They got me out._

_He’s not real._

**_Victory has defeated you._ **

 

Dean….Dean was gone. _Stone number one, and build on it._ He was gone. Vanished God knew where.

Cas had done the same, and even if he wasn’t in the same place as Dean, the angel never been particularly responsive to Sam’s prayers in the past.

Kevin was gone, taken by Crowley as….what, a consolation prize?

_You got what you wanted._ _Dick’s dead._

_But Dean’s gone._

Sam felt like screaming at the universe. They’d fixed the world for, what, the fourth time? Granted, half the time they were the ones that broke it in the first place, but they’d won. They’d defeated the Leviathans. Was it too much to ask the universe for a happy ending _just this once?_

Sam took a deep breath, trying and failing to steady himself. His mind kept replaying all the other times he’d lost his brother, and what he’d done.

When the Trickster (Gabriel, as they’d found out later) had killed Dean, he’d turned into a machine, ended up in a place where he’d been willing to kill Bobby to get at the Trickster.

When his brother had gone to Hell….well, the less said about the monster Sam had become over those four months, the better.

And now….what could he do? Bobby was dead. Cas was gone. Crowley wouldn’t help. Kevin had been taken. He had no leads. And he wasn’t completely sure he wouldn’t start hallucinating again from the stress.

_You can do this,_ he tried to reassure himself. _You can….you can…._

_You can’t. You’re not strong enough. You have never been enough to bring him back. _

_Why would this time around be any different?_

**_Victory has defeated you._ **

 

Sam didn’t know what to think. For a year - a _year_ \- Dean had been dead. Gone. Vanished off the face of the earth.

And now….now he was back. And not only was he back, he was….he was….different. His brother had changed, in more ways than one. But Sam wasn’t sure if those changes were his fault, or a result of Dean’s time in Purgatory.

Because that was where his brother had been for a year. Running from everything the two of them had ever killed. Alone. And Sam….

He had done _nothing._ Worse, he’d spent the year trying to find a regular life, flat out ignoring the supernatural world. And now Dean - and Kevin - had paid the price.

_Welcome back, Dean._

**_Victory has defeated you._ **

 

_You finish this trial? You’re dead, Sam._

He was so close. _So damn close_ to boarding up Hell, to putting things back to the way they had been….how long ago was it since he’d watched Jake open that gate?

All these demons, all this pain….on some level, it was his fault. He hadn’t been able to kill Jake, and he’d opened the gate to hell.

Now, Sam had the chance to set things right. No more demons possessing innocent people, no more desperate deals at crossroads. Just people, and the regular vampire-werewolf-shapeshifter crap.

If he needed to die to ensure that future happened….well, he’d been to heaven. Compared to where he could go….there were worse ways this could end.

“So?”

**_Victory has defeated you._ **

 

Sam watched in a mixture of shock and horror as plumes of black smoke erupted from the ground.

_I did this._

He’d been so caught up in trying to save his brother he hadn’t stopped to process the consequences. Now….now it was too late. Too late, as he remembered Death speaking of _a far greater evil than any of us have ever known._

_I did this._

He’d saved Dean from the Mark, but what had he unleashed in exchange?

He barely heard Dean tell him to get in the car.

_I did this._

Once again, he’d missed the forest fire for the embers. He’d unleashed another horror on the world.

_I did this._

**_Victory has defeated you._ **

 

_And Dean?_

And Dean…. The sun was back to its usual _don’t-look-unless-you-want-to-go-blind_ intensity. Chuck - God, whatever - had vanished, or faded. Which meant….which meant that, once again, Sam was in a world without his older brother. Granted, it was still a world, which was a tick in the plus column….

But it was a world without Dean.

_This won’t be like last time,_ Sam reminded himself. _We’ve got the Bunker, and Cas is still around. Maybe now I can finally get around to making a complete inventory…._

But it was a weak attempt, and Sam knew it. The world continued to spin, but it was missing the most important person.

**_Victory has defeated you._ **

 

Where should he even start?

Cas was dead, stabbed by Sam’s least favorite archangel.

Crowley had sacrificed his life to close the rift so they could trap Lucifer.

Mary….his mother had managed to drive Lucifer back into the rift, but at the last second the devil had pulled her in with him.

And if the golden glow from the second floor was any indication, Lucifer’s child was alive and likely flexing his powers.

_Why is it always us?_ he asked the universe as he left his brother to go check on the kid. _Why are we always the ones who have to sacrifice everything? Haven’t we fixed the world more often than we’ve broken it at this point?_

But, of course, there was no reply, and Sam was left to trace a trail of footprints burned into the floor on his own.

**_Victory has defeated you._ **

 

_No. No, no, nonononono._

This was not happening, could not be happening.

Dean couldn’t be _gone._

Lucifer was dead. Really, truly dead. Not trapped in a cage in hell, not stuck on the wrong side of a rift. He was dead, and Sam had to only touch the still smoldering embers of the archangel’s wings to prove that to himself. Maybe now he could move past the nightmares that had haunted him for….ever, it seemed. Since he’d returned from hell.

Maybe.

Or maybe, there would always be a new nightmare waiting, as Sam finally understood the horror of looking into your brother’s eyes and seeing an archangel staring back at you. One that wanted to destroy the world.

As Sam stared down at the burned out vessel of Lucifer that had haunted his nightmares for far too long, he could almost hear the archangel calling out one last taunt.

_You think you’ve won? You’ve killed me, but oh, the cost._

**_Victory has defeated you, Sam Winchester._ **

**Author's Note:**

> Comments will be loved and cherished.
> 
> Come scream at me on Tumblr (@squirrel-princess)


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